"Breakdown. I'm Kim Masters and this is the Hollywood breakdown. Joining me remotely is Matt Bellamy of the Hollywood reporter. Hello Matt Are There. So this is really. It's the Hollywood breakdown breakdown edition For for now a Lotta people are at home. Obviously as they should be as they should be. They are looking to stream things. We've talked a bit in the past about how it is that the studios don't WanNA put their really big budget movies on on demand because the finances the equations don't make sense. The streamers several are poised to come online and people have been asking. Why don't they go faster? Why DOESN'T HBO? Max Go faster? They're supposed to launch in. May they are asking you know the peacock which is the NBC universal offering. Why doesn't it go faster now? The and they were supposed to do a soft launch and then really go. I'd in July. The truth is they would love to go faster but in this environment things are going so crazy. I don't even know if this would have happened with or without corona virus. But they don't know if they even have the technology to support the onslaught to get everything ready so that is a big problem. That is if you want to know where it is. That's the answer. The question really is. Will they make the dates that they had set for themselves in the first place and everything I have heard is that they are you know scrambling everyone's working from home and the priority is to keep these launch dates? Hbo Max is the priority of at and T. and Warner media. They Really WanNa make that day. They've had to delay production on the friends reunion special which is going to be the big lure they have the friends library on. Hbo Max that is still on track. I'm told to be finished by the time that their launch date comes and with with peacock they now have no Olympics to promote the big plan for NBC Universal was to showcase peacock via the Olympics. And have some of the minor competitions on peacock but also a lot of the commentary and promoted heavily during the Olympics. That's gone they're really going to be relying now on the library content. They have the office and they have a bunch of originals and they have things that they can promote but without the Olympics. That's another challenge for them. A lot of Dick Wolf stuff and I'll note Jeff. Shell that chairman of NBC UNIVERSAL. Now the incoming chairman. Steve Burke retires has been diagnosed publicly with corona virus has said publicly that he is recovering so it just a part of the life. We're living right now. Is that kind of news. Meanwhile qube something. That Hollywood loves to talk about this. Is Jeffrey Katzenberg Meg? Whitman's big attempt to sell little short programming short videos. This is something. There was a lot of skepticism about in Hollywood. Even before this this epidemic. This pandemic will people. It's aimed at young people. Will they pay money to for this thing? Which I think. We're finding a lot of people despite their attempt to advertise it a lot and promoted still bunches of people out. There haven't heard of it and I don't know whether people will pay for Qube. Qube has certainly been paying for content. That's the interesting thing here. This is a two billion dollar venture. Most of that money is being spent on high end studio quality short form content which in Katzenberg's view has never been tried before. Yes there've been other things that have tried to get people to pay for short form content. Go Ninety was a big venture from Verizon Youtube at various premium. Tiers of trying to get people to pay hasn't really worked but Katzenberg says this is a different value proposition. Because this has stars this as people recognize creators that come from overall deals with the big studios all of that is included in Qube and it is tailor made for mobile which is where the audience is going especially young people so will people pay five dollars. Eight dollars without adds to watch this kind of content. We'll see April. Six is the launch date and they are zooming towards that they're not delaying based on the world state. And I think not even Katzenberg knows how this is going to play out. One of the many many unknowns. Thank you matt thank you."

KCRW's Hollywood Breakdown

Will new TV streamers HBO Max, Peacock, and Quibi meet their launch dates?

Automatic TRANSCRIPT

Breakdown. I'm Kim Masters and this is the Hollywood breakdown. Joining me remotely is Matt Bellamy of the Hollywood reporter. Hello Matt Are There. So this is really. It's the Hollywood breakdown breakdown edition For for now a Lotta people are at home. Obviously as they should be as they should be. They are looking to stream things. We've talked a bit in the past about how it is that the studios don't WanNA put their really big budget movies on on demand because the finances the equations don't make sense. The streamers several are poised to come online and people have been asking. Why don't they go faster? Why DOESN'T HBO? Max Go faster? They're supposed to launch in. May they are asking you know the peacock which is the NBC universal offering. Why doesn't it go faster now? The and they were supposed to do a soft launch and then really go. I'd in July. The truth is they would love to go faster but in this environment things are going so crazy. I don't even know if this would have happened with or without corona virus. But they don't know if they even have the technology to support the onslaught to get everything ready so that is a big problem. That is if you want to know where it is. That's the answer. The question really is. Will they make the dates that they had set for themselves in the first place and everything I have heard is that they are you know scrambling everyone's working from home and the priority is to keep these launch dates? Hbo Max is the priority of at and T. and Warner media. They Really WanNa make that day. They've had to delay production on the friends reunion special which is going to be the big lure they have the friends library on. Hbo Max that is still on track. I'm told to be finished by the time that their launch date comes and with with peacock they now have no Olympics to promote the big plan for NBC Universal was to showcase peacock via the Olympics. And have some of the minor competitions on peacock but also a lot of the commentary and promoted heavily during the Olympics. That's gone they're really going to be relying now on the library content. They have the office and they have a bunch of originals and they have things that they can promote but without the Olympics. That's another challenge for them. A lot of Dick Wolf stuff and I'll note Jeff. Shell that chairman of NBC UNIVERSAL. Now the incoming chairman. Steve Burke retires has been diagnosed publicly with corona virus has said publicly that he is recovering so it just a part of the life. We're living right now. Is that kind of news. Meanwhile qube something. That Hollywood loves to talk about this. Is Jeffrey Katzenberg Meg? Whitman's big attempt to sell little short programming short videos. This is something. There was a lot of skepticism about in Hollywood. Even before this this epidemic. This pandemic will people. It's aimed at young people. Will they pay money to for this thing? Which I think. We're finding a lot of people despite their attempt to advertise it a lot and promoted still bunches of people out. There haven't heard of it and I don't know whether people will pay for Qube. Qube has certainly been paying for content. That's the interesting thing here. This is a two billion dollar venture. Most of that money is being spent on high end studio quality short form content which in Katzenberg's view has never been tried before. Yes there've been other things that have tried to get people to pay for short form content. Go Ninety was a big venture from Verizon Youtube at various premium. Tiers of trying to get people to pay hasn't really worked but Katzenberg says this is a different value proposition. Because this has stars this as people recognize creators that come from overall deals with the big studios all of that is included in Qube and it is tailor made for mobile which is where the audience is going especially young people so will people pay five dollars. Eight dollars without adds to watch this kind of content. We'll see April. Six is the launch date and they are zooming towards that they're not delaying based on the world state. And I think not even Katzenberg knows how this is going to play out. One of the many many unknowns. Thank you matt thank you.

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Will new TV streamers HBO Max, Peacock, and Quibi meet their launch dates?